# Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Source: https://thegisthub.com/books/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy Last updated: 2026-10-24 Published 1878 · 838 pages · ISBN 9780143035008 · Categories: Fiction, Relationships, Society and history Anna Karenina is Leo Tolstoy's novel about a married woman in Russian high society who leaves her husband for Count Vronsky, set against Levin's search for meaning on his country estate. For readers who want the plot part by part and the ideas behind it. ## The gist **Anna Karenina**, the wife of a powerful official in St. Petersburg, falls in love with the young cavalry officer **Count Vronsky**. She leaves her cold husband, **Karenin**, and loses her son, her place in society and, slowly, her peace of mind. Alongside her story runs that of **Konstantin Levin**, an awkward landowner who loves **Kitty Shcherbatskaya**, works his land beside the peasants and struggles to find a reason to live. Tolstoy sets passion against family, the city against the country, and social rules against private conscience. The novel asks what makes a life, and a marriage, happy or unhappy. ## Key ideas ### 1. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way Tolstoy opens with the claim that happy families are alike and unhappy ones differ. The novel then lays out many households: the Oblonskys patch up an affair, the Karenins live in cold formality, Anna and Vronsky live outside the rules, and Levin and Kitty build something new. Each is unhappy in a specific way. The opening line works as a thesis: happiness comes from shared basics, while misery has endless particular causes. ### 2. Passion without a place in society consumes itself Anna and Vronsky love each other sincerely. But she cannot divorce, cannot remarry and cannot be received by the women of her class. He can still go to clubs, elections and dinners. The gap grows. Tolstoy shows that a love cut off from family, work and community has nothing to feed on but itself. Anna's jealousy is not just a flaw. It comes from her position: Vronsky is the only thing she has left. ### 3. Society punishes women and forgives men Stiva cheats on Dolly and is forgiven within days. Vronsky's affair costs him little socially. Anna loses her son, her friends and her place at the opera. Tolstoy shows the double standard with cold accuracy. Karenin worries most about his reputation. Countess Lydia Ivanovna uses religion to control him. The novel does not say the rules are just. It shows exactly how they operate on one woman. ### 4. Meaning comes from work and ordinary life Levin is happiest when he mows hay with the peasants and loses himself in the rhythm of the scythe. He dislikes city talk and abstract theory. His farming plans, his marriage and his child slowly tie him to the world. Tolstoy contrasts this rooted life with the restless life of Anna and Vronsky. The novel suggests that a person finds purpose in daily duties and real relationships more than in grand passion. ### 5. Facing death changes how one lives The death of Levin's brother Nikolai shocks Levin. He cannot help, while Kitty nurses Nikolai calmly. Afterward Levin is haunted by the thought that everything ends in death and so means nothing. The fear drives him close to suicide. Tolstoy treats this crisis as the center of Levin's story. It forces the question of why to live at all, which ordinary busy life lets most people avoid. ### 6. Forgiveness can be real and still not last When Anna nearly dies in childbirth, Karenin forgives her and Vronsky. For a moment he feels a spiritual joy he has never known. But Anna recovers and cannot stand him, society laughs at him, and he slides back into coldness under Countess Lydia's influence. Tolstoy shows that a true moral moment can be lost if the people and habits around it do not change. ### 7. (Spoiler) Faith as a reason to live In the final part, a peasant says that some men live for their bellies and some for their souls and for God. Levin suddenly feels he has always known this. He decides the meaning of his life is the goodness he can choose to put into it. Tolstoy ends not with Anna's death but with this quiet turn. Levin will still lose his temper and make mistakes, but he now has a reason to keep going. ## Questions this book answers ### What is Anna Karenina about? Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is about a married woman in Russian high society who falls in love with Count Vronsky and leaves her husband, losing her son and her social world. A parallel story follows Levin, a landowner who marries Kitty and searches for the meaning of life. The novel compares love, marriage, family and faith in 1870s Russia. ### How does Anna Karenina end? Spoiler: Anna, isolated and consumed by jealousy, throws herself under a train at a station outside Moscow. Vronsky leaves to fight in the Serbian war, hoping to die. The last part follows Levin, who nearly despairs over death and meaninglessness, then finds faith after a peasant speaks about living for the soul. He decides his life has meaning in the good he does. ### What is the theme of Anna Karenina? The main themes are love against duty, the hypocrisy of society, and the search for meaning. Tolstoy contrasts Anna's passion, which isolates her, with Levin's rooted life of work and family. The novel shows how social rules punish women more than men, and asks what makes a family happy. ### Who is Levin in Anna Karenina? Konstantin Levin is the novel's second hero, a landowner who prefers farming to city life. He is refused by Kitty, later marries her, works beside his peasants and struggles with questions of death and faith. Many readers see him as a portrait of Tolstoy himself. ### Why does Anna Karenina throw herself under a train? Spoiler: Anna has lost her son, her place in society and any hope of a divorce. She depends entirely on Vronsky and comes to believe he no longer loves her. Morphine, jealousy and isolation cloud her mind. Her death also echoes the railway guard killed on the day she first met Vronsky. ## Quotes > Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Opening line, Constance Garnett translation) ## Full summary ### Two stories in one novel **Anna Karenina** is a novel by **Leo Tolstoy**, published in parts in the Russian Messenger from 1875 to 1877 and as a complete book in 1878. It has eight parts. Tolstoy wrote it after War and Peace, and he called it his first real novel. It is set in the Russia of the 1870s, among the nobility of Moscow and St. Petersburg and on country estates. The book follows two main lines that touch only a few times. The first is **Anna Arkadyevna Karenina**, a beautiful and intelligent woman married to **Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin**, a senior government official twenty years older than she is. They have a son, **Seryozha**. Anna falls in love with **Count Alexei Vronsky**, a rich young officer, and the affair destroys her marriage and her position. The second line is **Konstantin Dmitrich Levin**, a landowner who prefers his estate to the city. He loves **Kitty**, the youngest Shcherbatsky daughter. His story is about work, marriage, death and faith. Many readers see Levin as a version of Tolstoy himself. The famous first sentence sets the theme: happy families resemble each other, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The novel then shows many families, happy and unhappy, side by side. ### Part One: the meeting at the station The novel opens in the Moscow home of **Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky**, called **Stiva**, Anna's charming and careless brother. His wife, **Dolly**, has found out that he had an affair with the children's governess. The house is in chaos. Stiva asks his sister to come from St. Petersburg and make peace. Vronsky goes to the station to meet his mother, who shares a compartment with Anna. Their eyes meet. As they leave, a railway guard falls under a train and is killed. Anna calls it a bad omen. In a few days she persuades Dolly to forgive Stiva. Meanwhile Levin comes to Moscow to propose to Kitty, Dolly's younger sister. Kitty refuses him. She expects a proposal from Vronsky, who has been courting her. At a ball, Vronsky dances all evening with Anna, and Kitty sees that he has forgotten her. Anna, shaken by her own feelings, leaves Moscow early. Vronsky follows her onto the train. When she arrives home, she notices for the first time that her husband's ears stick out. ### Parts Two and Three: the race and the confession Kitty falls ill from shame and goes to a German spa with her family. There she meets **Varenka**, a calm young woman who lives for others. Kitty tries to copy her goodness, finds it false in herself, and slowly recovers. In St. Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky become lovers. Society gossips. Karenin warns Anna about appearances but cares more about his reputation than her feelings. Anna becomes pregnant. At an officers' steeplechase, Vronsky rides his mare **Frou-Frou**. He makes a careless movement at a jump, and the horse falls and breaks her back. She has to be shot. Anna's open distress in the stands gives her away. In the carriage home she tells Karenin that she loves Vronsky and hates her husband. Karenin decides not to divorce, which would shame him, and not to duel. He demands that she keep up appearances and stay with him. Levin, back in the country, works on his farm. He spends a day mowing hay with the peasants and feels a rare joy in the physical work. He develops ideas about farming that treat the peasants as partners. Dolly spends the summer with her children at a neglected estate near Levin's. Her days are a round of small worries: sick children, a leaking roof, no money. Levin visits her, and she hints that Kitty, who will soon come to stay, has suffered too. His pride makes him refuse to see Kitty. Then, at dawn after a night in a haystack, he sees her pass in a carriage on the road and knows he still loves her. ### Part Four: childbirth and forgiveness Karenin finds Vronsky at his house and decides on a divorce. Then a telegram calls him home: Anna has given birth to a daughter and is dying of fever. At her bedside, Anna asks him to forgive her. He does, and feels the joy of forgiving. He even takes the baby into his care. Vronsky, humiliated by Karenin's generosity, goes home and shoots himself in the chest. He survives. Anna recovers and finds she cannot bear her husband's goodness. Karenin offers to divorce her and give up their son. She refuses the divorce and leaves with Vronsky for Italy, taking the baby girl, Annie, and leaving Seryozha behind. In Moscow, Levin and Kitty meet again at Dolly's. At a card table they write only the first letters of words in chalk and understand each other. He proposes again, and she accepts. ### Parts Five and Six: two marriages Levin and Kitty marry. Their first months are full of quarrels and small jealousies, but they grow closer. When Levin's brother **Nikolai** is dying of tuberculosis in a provincial hotel, Kitty insists on coming. Levin is helpless at the deathbed. Kitty knows what to do and nurses Nikolai with calm practical care. Levin sees a strength in her he did not know. The couple settle on Levin's estate, and Kitty becomes pregnant. Guests fill the house in the summer. When a young visitor, **Vasenka Veslovsky**, flirts with Kitty, Levin's jealousy flares, and he orders the man to leave. The scene is comic, but it shows how much the marriage means to him. Anna and Vronsky travel in Italy and then return to Russia. Anna's position is impossible. She is not divorced and cannot remarry. Women of her class will not receive her. On Seryozha's birthday she slips into Karenin's house to see him. The boy has been told his mother is dead. The meeting is short and painful. At the opera, a woman in the next box openly insults her, and Anna is publicly shamed. Vronsky has left the army. They live on his country estate, where he builds a hospital and runs the land. Dolly visits and finds Anna beautiful and luxurious but restless. Anna has started taking morphine at night. She tells Dolly she will have no more children. Vronsky spends time in local elections and in society, where Anna cannot follow. Her jealousy grows. ### Spoilers: the ending This section reveals the ending. Anna and Vronsky move to Moscow to wait for a divorce. Levin and Kitty are also in Moscow for the birth of their first child. Levin, who has no faith, finds himself praying through the long labor. When his son, **Mitya**, is born, he feels fear and tenderness more than joy. Karenin, now under the influence of the pious **Countess Lydia Ivanovna**, refuses the divorce. Anna is shut inside the house. She suspects Vronsky of loving another woman and of wanting to leave her. Every day they quarrel, then make up. Vronsky is patient and cold by turns. Anna feels he stays with her out of duty. After a final quarrel, Vronsky leaves to visit his mother. Anna sends him a message and then a telegram. His reply seems indifferent. She goes to the railway station in a state of confusion, seeing the people around her as false and hateful. At **Obiralovka** station, she remembers the guard killed on the day she met Vronsky. She throws herself under a freight train. In her last moment she wants to stop, but it is too late. The candle by which she read her life goes out. Part Eight belongs mostly to Levin. Vronsky, broken, leaves with a squadron of volunteers he pays for himself to fight for the Serbs against the Turks. He hopes to die. Levin, a husband and now a father, has been tormented by thoughts of death and the meaninglessness of life. He hides ropes and guns from himself for fear he will use them. Then a peasant tells him that one man lives for his belly and another lives for his soul and for God. Levin feels a sudden understanding. He decides that the meaning of his life is the good he can put into it. The novel ends with him at peace, knowing he will still quarrel and fail, but no longer without purpose. ### What the critics say Readers have argued for more than a century about whether Tolstoy condemns Anna or defends her. The epigraph, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," can be read both ways. Some critics find the Levin chapters, especially the farming and politics, too long and too close to Tolstoy's own views. Others think the double plot is the point: Levin's slow search answers Anna's fast fall. Feminist readers note the double standard that lets Stiva cheat freely while Anna loses everything. Several English translations are in use, from Constance Garnett's to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's (2000) and Rosamund Bartlett's (2014). ### Who should read it Read it if you want a long, detailed novel about love, marriage and the search for meaning, with characters drawn from inside. It suits readers who enjoy social detail and moral questions without easy answers, and students who need the plot part by part. ## Do this week - List three things your household does well together and one source of friction, and talk about the friction this week. - Do one hour of physical work you usually avoid, like gardening or cleaning, without your phone, and notice your mood. - Read the mowing scene in Part Three, Chapters 4 and 5, and write down what Levin feels during the work. - Write down one rule you judge differently for men and women, and ask yourself whether it holds. - Spend a quiet hour on a question you avoid, such as what you want your life to be for, and write one honest answer. Summary by The Gist Hub (https://thegisthub.com). In our own words, not the book's text.